DealBook: Frank Bisignano, Top Lieutenant of Dimon, Is Leaving JPMorgan

Mark Lennihan/Associated PressJamie Dimon, left, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, and Frank Bisignano, co-chief operating officer.

A senior executive in the inner circle of Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, is leaving, the latest departure after the bank reported a multibillion-dollar trading loss last year.

Frank J. Bisignano, co-chief operating officer, will become chief executive of First Data Corporation, a payment processing firm, Mr. Dimon said in a statement on Sunday. The trading losses at the bank, the nation’s largest, have swelled to more than $6.2 billion since they were first disclosed almost a year ago.

Mr. Dimon said Matthew E. Zames, who shared the role of chief operating officer with Mr. Bisignano, would take over all aspects of the job, effective immediately.

“He is a proven business executive, who has performed exceptionally well since coming into his corporate role in May of last year,” Mr. Dimon said.

With Mr. Bisignano’s departure, executives who once surrounded Mr. Dimon as he helped steer the bank through the 2008 financial crisis will be even thinner. Several other executives have already left, including Heidi Miller, James E. Staley, Bill Winters and Steve Black.

Mr. Bisignano was promoted to co-chief operating officer last July as part of a broad management reshuffling. During his time at JPMorgan, Mr. Bisignano gained a reputation as a kind of Mr. Fix-It. His reputation had not been tarnished by the outsize bets made by traders in JPMorgan’s chief investment office.

He took the reins of JPMorgan’s floundering mortgage unit in 2011 just as the bank was grappling with thorny legal issues, including investors who accused the bank of selling shaky mortgage-backed securities that later imploded.

To root out the problems, Mr. Bisignano revamped the mortgage unit and unveiled a policy to address cases in which JPMorgan had wrongfully foreclosed on active-duty military members, a violation of federal law. He was a skilled manager at the bank and he kept a tight watch over the mortgage operations.

Mr. Bisignano will leave at a challenging time for JPMorgan, which once held special sway with federal regulators, in part because the bank largely sidestepped the financial crisis.

Now, JPMorgan is facing a criminal inquiry about whether it misled investors and regulators about the botched trades. Besides that inquiry, JPMorgan is dealing with investigations by at least eight federal agencies, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to the people with direct knowledge of the matter. Prosecutors are examining a variety of issues, including possible breakdowns in the bank’s controls of money-laundering activities.

The bank is also working to bolster its risk and compliance controls while repairing frayed relationships with regulators in Washington. The breakdown between JPMorgan and its primary regulator was illuminated during a Senate hearing and a report by the Senate’s Subcommittee on Investigations that painted a picture of a bank that sometimes took a defiant position with regulators.

To account for the trading losses, Mr. Dimon has testified before Congress and repeatedly apologized for the mistakes.

In his annual letter to shareholders this month, Mr. Dimon continued to be contrite. He vowed to continue improving risk controls, again expressing that the bank “let our regulators down.”

Mr. Dimon promised to redouble efforts to fix compliance problems. “We are reprioritizing our major projects and initiatives,” he said.